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Category Archives: Baby Grady

I had so many expectations on how I thought pregnancy would be and the type of pregnancy I wanted to have. Of course I wanted to continue my running and training and maybe even run a long race or two. Then I actually got pregnant and things didn’t quite go the way my pre-pregnant self had visioned.

We found out I was pregnant on Father’s Day 2013. On the right is Grady’s first picture at 6 weeks gestation.

First Trimester

Fitness & Nutrition: Immediately after getting pregnant my cardio suffered a massive blow. Workouts felt exponentially harder and I knew immediately that Wineglass Marathon, which I had just started training for, was not going to happen. I faced reality and decided to drop the marathon and to ease up on the workouts (my training plan was really aggressive) and just have a fit pregnancy. Then I hit the 6-7 week mark and the nausea and exhaustion set in. Top that off with a stressful job with long hours and not a whole lot of fitness happened for the remainder of the first trimester. Along with the nausea came the food aversions. The foods I couldn’t even look at included chicken, zucchini and anything BBQ. My morning sickness was definitely all day sickness.

Some of the foods that got me through the first trimester.

Body Changes: I was in maternity clothes pretty early on. I had gained 10 pounds before I got pregnant so my clothes were already tight. Combine that with pregnancy bloating and my favorite pencil skirts were not happening. Also, my boobs went from a B to a DD almost overnight.

Weeks 4, 5 and 12

Baby Health: Everything developed right on track. We did the Panorama test around 10 weeks which was a simple blood test that isolated the small amount of fetal blood from mine. It tested for any trisomy abnormalities and gender. Everything was normal and gender test said BOY! I was skeptical though and refused to announce boy until we had our anatomy ultrasound at 20 weeks.

Our 12 week ultrasound

Second Trimester

Fitness & Nutrition: Ahhh the magical second trimester. Morning sickness eased up and I got my energy back. I got back to running (run/walks) but couldn’t tell you how far or often because I had a Garmin-less pregnancy. I decided to stop riding because of the fall risk and did my last workout at FitCrew at 13 weeks (it was just too intense for my energy level). I did some pregnancy workout DVDs but that was honestly short lived. As far as nutrition? Pregnancy became my excuse to eat whatever I wanted (that was allowed) and I became a human trash can. For some reason people really like to feed the pregnant girl. My coworkers were always giving me tons of goodies which was awesome at the time. Post partum… not so much. My weight gain wasn’t too terrible though and my OB was happy with my overall health. They were keeping a close eye on my blood pressure though, which was consistently high throughout pregnancy, and immediately returned to normal once Grady was out.

Body Changes: My belly was getting bigger and bigger (obviously) but I managed to escape any stretch marks in the second trimester. I did get mask of pregnancy on my face and a very faint linea negra up to my belly button.

Weeks 13, 14 and 15

Weeks 16, 17 and 18

Weeks 19, 20 and 22

Weeks 23, 25 and 26

Some fun maternity shits!

Baby Health: Again, right on track. We had our 20 week anatomy scan which confirmed baby was, in fact, a boy. It was also confirmed that everything was measuring normal.

20 week ultrasound photos

Third Trimester

Fitness & Nutrition: Right around 24 weeks was when running became too uncomfortable and I began just walking, which honestly wasn’t all that often. Nutrition? Still a human garbage can. The one craving that stuck with me throughout pregnancy was apple juice. I always joked that Grady was floating in apple juice instead of amniotic fluid.

Body Changes: Let’s talk numbers for a second. When I am at my most fit, I weigh in the neighborhood of 145 pounds. When I got pregnant I weighed 154 pounds. At my full-term appointment I weighed in at 200 pounds exactly. I intend to do a separate post about my post-partum goals and plan but so far I’ve lost 30 of those pounds. I did end up with some stretch marks lower below my belly button. All was fine and good… until he dropped and they popped up immediately.

Weeks 27, 30 and 32

Weeks 34, 35 and 36

Weeks 38, 39 and 40

Baby Health: We did have one small scare during the third trimester. One particularly stressful day at work, towards the end of the work day, I realized I hadn’t noticed any movement from the little guy since the evening prior. I called my OB and she told me to go to labor and delivery immediately for monitoring. Both Mike and my mom met me there and the second the monitor was strapped to my belly the little stinker started kicking away. The Doc said he was just fine and I lost about 5 years from my life span. Other than that baby was healthy and growing right on track. On February 25th, the day after my due date we had an ultrasound to make sure everything was ok and that it was safe to let me go another week. My fluid measured fine and it was fun to see the little guy again before we officially met him.

Grady was a very aggressive kicker and often my stomach looked very distorted from the positions he would get himself into in there.

Overall I had a very easy pregnancy without complications. I didn’t have to be induced (we had it scheduled for March 3rd, just in case) and had a pretty ideal birth. Pregnancy just wasn’t easy on me mentally, I struggled with the weight gain (even though I wasn’t making healthy eating choices) and was just generally exhausted. I’m very lucky to have had my mom group (we group text all day long) to talk to and I really can’t or shouldn’t complain given the final outcome. It’s true what they say, you forget all the hard parts and find yourself wanting more babies, in my case I want 2 more just like Grady! I’m ready to work hard to get this weight off and I think (and hope!) next time around will be a little easier.

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On March 1st, 2014 Mike and I met the most perfect little person, someone we’ve been waiting to meet for 40 weeks and 5 days. We named this little guy Grady Michael. He was born at 8:05pm weighing in at 7 pounds, 13 ounces and measuring 21.2 inches long.

Like every woman in my family, I was past my due date and more than ready to have our baby on the outside. My house was clean and organized, my fridge and pantry stocked and all the little to-do’s were checked off. So I did all the things everyone tells you to:

I bounced on the birth ball for hours on end:

I got an incredible pedicure (where the woman next to me asked if I was having twins 😐 ):

Then Mike and I went for an hour long trail walk on February 28th:

Last family of two selfie:

Around 3am on March 1st I was woken up by what felt like mild menstrual cramps. I watched the clock and noticed they were time-able and coming at regular intervals, every 15 minutes. I laid there watching the clock for an hour just to be sure, woke Mike up and started using my contraction timing app. Within another hour I was at ten minutes apart so we got out of bed, showered (shaved my legs – priorities people!) and I called my mom to tell her to be on standby.

My OB had said when the contractions were 5 minutes apart was when it was time to head to the hospital. Around lunchtime the contractions started to slow down so I retreated to the bedroom to pout and try to get a little sleep. Finally around 2pm the contractions picked up again and were 10-15 min apart but were starting to get very very painful. I called the OB at 3pm and she told me to hang on until 5 minutes apart. So I continued to labor with Mike and my girls by my side.

At 530pm I suddenly went from 10-15 min apart to 2-5 minutes apart. At this point I was pretty much screaming through every contraction and Mike was really trying to get me to leave for the hospital but I was very much in denial. He finally got me to leave at 6pm and we were at the hospital by 620pm.

By the time we got to the hospital my contractions were on top of each other, I had never felt that much pain before. I was such a mess and am so thankful that my husband is very calm in stressful situations and was my rock. I was brought back to triage and told that I was already 8cm dialated but my water hadn’t broken yet. I was immediately taken to labor and delivery (around 645pm) where my mom joined us. At this point I was BEGGING for drugs and proclaiming that I couldn’t do it anymore. The shaking was uncontrollable and my pupils were so restricted from the pain that my mom and Mike both said I looked high. I was very very fortunate that my water hadn’t broken and that the anesthesiologist just happened to be free and nearby. Fluids were pushed, blood drawn, a million health history questions were answered and about an hour later I got the sweet relief of a small dose of the epidural.

My OB came in, broke my water and told the nurse to bring Mike and my mom back in (they had to leave during the epidural) because I was 10cm and it was time to push. When Mike came in she asked him what he did for a living and then informed him that he was going to catch Grady. Approximately 4 contractions and 1 episiotemy (necessary because Grady’s heart rate kept dropping) later and our little man came screaming into the world at 8:05 pm. It was the most beautiful sound in the world. He was placed onto my chest where he promptly peed all over me (little stinker) and we had our first cuddle for about an hour. All the necessary testing, measuring, etc were done and then Mike had his turn.

We were sent home two days later to start our adventure with our newly expanded family!